expedition

Latin, expeditio.

Expeditio refers to military service, and in particular to the
obligation to serve in the army or at sea. The subject of military
service before the Conquest is a complex one which has long been the
subject of heated controversy, Domesday supplying most of the fuel.

In the Anglo-Saxon period the obligation to military perform service was
inherent in the land and assessed in terms of units known as hidesor carucates.
Theoretically, every landowner could therefore calculate his military
liability by totalling the number of hides he possessed, and royal
officials could calculate the service due from the areas for which they
were responsible in the same manner.

In practice, it cannot have been as neat as this. Domesday Book does provide some particulars. According to a famous entryin the Berkshire Domesday, every 5 hides had to provide one man-at-armsand
the money needed to support him for his period of service. Similarly,
Exeter 'gave as much service as 5 hides of land'; Malmesbury provided
one man from every 5 hides; and 'Bedford answered for a half Hundredbefore
1066, and does so now, in [military] expeditions, [by land] and in
ships.' Naval obligations were also detailed for Dover and several other
boroughs, together with the financial support required. Even inland towns like Bedford, Leicester and Warwick owed this ship service.

By the twelfth century, military service appeared to be based on quite different principles, with tenants-in-chiefresponsible
for quotas of knights, the knights themselves being endowed with
knight's fees to support their military obligations. Whether this was
the result of the deliberate introduction of a new, feudalsystem
by the Conqueror, or whether the old arrangement based on hides evolved
out of sight into one based on fees, has long been debated. An
evolutionary rather cataclysmic interpretation is now generally
favoured; clear proof of either interpretation is not available.

For more detail on the Anglo-Saxon system, see C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon military institutions on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1962); and Richard P. Abels, Lordship and military obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1988); on Anglo-Norman military service, see J.H. Round, Feudal England (1895); C. Warren Hollister, The military organisation of Norman England (1965); and John Gillingham, 'The introduction of knight service into England', Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 4 (1982), pages 53-64; 181-87.